How to Get a VA Loan: From Certificate of Eligibility to Closing

Start with the thing you will be told that is not true. Search how long a Certificate of Eligibility takes and you will find confident answers: three to five business days, 24 hours online, two weeks by post. None of them comes from the Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA publishes no processing-time figure for a COE at all. The only timing statement it makes is that postal requests "may take longer" than the alternatives. Every specific number in circulation was written by somebody with a mortgage to sell.

That matters beyond the COE, because the same pattern repeats at every stage of this process. A VA loan has two sets of rules running in parallel. One set belongs to the programme — the funding fee percentages, the residual income minimums, the 41% debt-to-income standard, Minimum Property Requirements, the occupancy certification. Those are identical everywhere. The other set belongs to whichever lender you walked into — the credit score floor, the debt-to-income ceiling, the reserves, the property types they will touch. Those vary wildly, and they are what usually decides whether your file is approved.

This guide walks the process in the order it actually happens, and at each stage says which of the two is operating. That is the difference between knowing what to do when something goes wrong and simply being told no.

Who this guide is for

• First-time VA borrowers who want the sequence before they start viewing
• Anyone who has been quoted a COE turnaround time and wants to know where it came from
• Buyers deciding how many lenders to approach, and what to ask each one
• Veterans whose offer has been passed over because an agent "doesn't like VA"
• Borrowers heading into a VA appraisal and unsure what the extra check covers
• Anyone whose debt-to-income is above 41% and has been told that ends it
• Borrowers who have already been declined once and want to know whether it was the VA or the lender

Quick answer

The order is: establish eligibility and get your Certificate of Eligibility, by one of three official routes; shop at least three lenders on their overlays rather than their adverts; get pre-approved with residual income calculated for your real household size; make an offer; sit the VA appraisal, which checks value and Minimum Property Requirements together; clear underwriting against the 41% debt-to-income standard and the residual income table in 38 CFR §36.4340(e); and close, certifying occupancy as 38 U.S.C. §3704(c)(1) requires you to do at application and again at closing. The funding fee is 2.15% on a first-use purchase with no deposit, 3.3% on subsequent use, and it is the only fee that can be financed into the loan. The VA publishes no COE processing time and no federal agency publishes an average time-to-close. If you are declined, assume it was a lender overlay until the lender tells you in writing which rule failed.

Step one: the Certificate of Eligibility

The COE is the document proving you have entitlement to use. It is not a pre-approval, a credit decision or a loan offer — it is the VA confirming your service qualifies you.

There are three routes, and they are the only three.

Online through the VA's own request form. You submit directly, with your service documentation to hand.

Through your lender, using the VA's Web LGY system. Most lenders have access and can pull a COE while you are on the phone. This is the route most borrowers should take, for a simple reason: the lender needs the document anyway, so you are not adding a step.

By post, on VA Form 26-1880. Still available, still valid, and the one route the VA itself flags as slower.

On timing, be clear with yourself about what is known. The VA does not publish a processing time for any of these routes. It says postal requests may take longer. That is the whole of the official position. Start the COE before you start making offers, because you cannot plan around a figure nobody publishes.

One more thing people get wrong here. Your COE shows your basic entitlement, and basic entitlement is US$36,000 under 38 U.S.C. §3703 — a programme figure. It does not show bonus entitlement, which is the 25% guaranty that applies above US$144,000 and is what actually supports a large no-deposit loan. Reading US$36,000 on the COE and concluding that is your borrowing limit is the single most common misreading of the document.

Step two: choosing a lender, and why this matters more here

On most mortgages, shopping means comparing price. On a VA loan it means comparing who will approve you, and the spread is far wider.

The reason is structural. The VA sets no minimum credit score — 38 CFR §36.4340 does not mention a score, and it says explicitly that an absence of credit history "will not generally be viewed as an adverse factor." So the floor is set entirely by the lender. In practice floors across the market run from around 580 to 640, and some lenders will manually underwrite below any of that. Two lenders can look at identical files and reach opposite answers, with neither of them breaking a rule.

The same is true of maximum debt-to-income, reserve requirements, and whether a lender will finance a manufactured home or a condominium in a particular project. All overlays. None of it the VA's position.

So when you call a lender, ask three questions before you ask about rates:

• What is your minimum credit score for a VA loan, and is it an overlay?
• What is your maximum debt-to-income, and do you use the residual income exception in the regulation?
• How many months of reserves do you require, if any?

A lender that cannot answer the second question properly is a lender that will not use the programme's own flexibility on your behalf. Ask three lenders. The one with the loosest overlay is not necessarily the cheapest, but you want to know both before you choose.

Step three: pre-approval

Pre-approval is the lender's conditional underwriting of you, before there is a property. For a VA loan it should include a residual income calculation, and this is where a good lender distinguishes itself.

Residual income is a programme rule, published in 38 CFR §36.4340(e). It is the money left each month after the mortgage payment, taxes, insurance, maintenance, utilities and every other debt. For loans of US$80,000 and above, these are the minimums.

Above five, add US$80 per member to a family of seven. For loans of US$79,999 and below the figures are lower. All household members count, including a non-borrowing spouse, unless that spouse's stable employment is verified — so check the lender has counted your household correctly, because an extra person moves you up a row.

At pre-approval, get the number itself, not just a yes. If your residual income comfortably exceeds the guideline, you have leverage later.

Step four: making an offer, and what sellers get wrong

VA offers are sometimes treated as weaker than conventional ones, and the reasoning behind that is mostly out of date or simply wrong.

The two live objections are worth naming. The first is the appraisal, because a VA appraisal includes the Minimum Property Requirements check and a conventional one does not — so there is a real additional way for the deal to fail. That is a genuine point about the property, not about you. The second is timing, and here nobody has a defensible figure, because no US government agency publishes an average time-to-close for any mortgage type. The series people half-remember was ICE Mortgage Technology's Origination Insight Report, drawn from lender-platform data, and its last verifiable numbers were June 2021: 49 days for all loans and 51 days for purchase loans. That series has not continued. When an agent tells you VA takes longer, they are working from impression.

What sellers more often get wrong is the assumption that no deposit means a weak buyer. It does not. A no-deposit VA borrower has cleared residual income and debt-to-income underwriting and holds a government guaranty behind the loan. What you can do about the perception is practical: have the pre-approval in writing, be specific about what the appraisal involves so it is not a surprise, and where the property is obviously sound, say so in the offer.

Step five: the VA appraisal

A VA appraisal is ordered through the VA and carried out by a VA fee appraiser — not an appraiser your lender selects. It does two things at once.

It establishes value, as any appraisal does. And it checks the property against Minimum Property Requirements, hooked to 38 CFR §36.4351 and set out in the VA Lender's Handbook, Pamphlet 26-7, Chapter 12. That list runs to 44 topics: space and access, drainage, flood and seismic hazards, zoning, utilities, water supply and sewage disposal, hazards, mechanical systems, roofing, attics, crawl spaces, basements, pools, lead-based paint, radon, nearby airports, manufactured homes and energy conservation.

MPRs are a programme rule. No lender can waive them, and no lender invented them. That cuts both ways: it means a lender cannot make your deal easier, and it also means a failure is not a judgement on your file.

When a property fails

There are three outcomes and no fourth.

The defect is repaired before closing, most often by the seller, and the appraiser re-inspects. The price is renegotiated, with the work dealt with another way. Or the deal ends and you look elsewhere.

Your eligibility and entitlement are untouched by any of this. An MPR failure costs you the property, not the programme. This is also the clearest case for not emotionally committing to a house before the appraisal is back.

Step six: underwriting

Underwriting is where programme rules and overlays are hardest to tell apart, so here is the division.

Credit. No VA minimum exists. The regulation requires "a careful analysis of the available credit data". Whatever score your lender wants is theirs.

Residual income. A programme rule, per the table above. The regulation describes the figures as "a guide and not a final determinant", which gives an underwriter room in both directions.

Debt-to-income. 38 CFR §36.4340 says "the standard is 41 percent or less." Above 41% the loan can still be approved, but the lender must justify it in a statement signed by the underwriter's supervisor, which the regulation says "must not be perfunctory."

Then the clause worth memorising: if residual income exceeds the guideline by at least 20%, that second-level review is not required. That is in the regulation. It is why capable VA lenders write files well beyond 41% when residual income is strong, and why a lender refusing to look past 41% is applying its own policy, not the VA's standard. If you are over 41% with strong residual income, name this provision and ask whether they use it.

Step seven: closing costs and the funding fee

Two things about VA closing costs are worth having straight.

First, the VA restricts what a veteran can be charged at closing. The detail of which charges are allowable sits in the VA Lender's Handbook rather than in a short published table, so ask your lender to identify each fee on the loan estimate against that guidance rather than accepting a list.

Second, and this is the hard rule: the funding fee can be financed into the loan, and it is the only fee that can be. Every other cost is paid on closing day, from your own funds, a seller concession or a lender credit. A no-deposit VA purchase is not a no-cash purchase.

The fee itself is a programme figure, effective 7 April 2023.

Check this against your closing disclosure. The figures 2.30% and 3.60% are still widely published, and they expired at the end of 2021 — they were the Blue Water Navy rates for loans closed between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2021 only.

You may owe nothing at all. Exemption is a programme rule and covers veterans receiving VA compensation for a service-connected disability; those eligible for it but receiving retirement or active-duty pay instead; surviving spouses receiving Dependency and Indemnity Compensation; service members with a proposed or memorandum rating before closing from a pre-discharge claim; and active-duty members with evidence of a Purple Heart on or before closing.

At closing you also certify occupancy for the second time. Under 38 U.S.C. §3704(c)(1) the certification is required at application and at closing.

Mistakes that cost money

Treating a quoted COE timescale as official. The VA publishes none. Start the COE early rather than scheduling around a number somebody invented.

Approaching one lender. With no VA score floor, the floor is the lender's, and floors across the market differ by 60 points or more. One application tells you one lender's appetite.

Reading US$36,000 on the COE as your borrowing limit. It is basic entitlement. Above US$144,000 the guaranty is 25% of the loan amount, and that is what supports a large loan.

Accepting a 41% debt-to-income refusal. 41% is the standard, and the regulation drops the supervisory review entirely when residual income exceeds the guideline by 20%.

Assuming no deposit means no cash needed. Only the funding fee can be financed. Everything else is due at closing.

Paying the funding fee when exempt. Check the exemption list before closing, not after. If it appears on your disclosure and you qualify, that is an error to raise, not a negotiation.

Falling for a house before the VA appraisal. The MPR check is a real failure mode and no lender can waive it.

Taking a decline at face value. On a VA loan the decline is usually an overlay. Get the reason in writing and test it against the programme's actual rules.

After a decline: what to do next

A decline on a VA loan is not usually a statement about the programme, so work out which it was.

Ask for the reason in writing. You want the specific rule that failed, not a summary. Score, debt-to-income, reserves, property type, documentation.

Check it against the programme. If it was credit score, the VA has no minimum and the floor was theirs. If it was debt-to-income above 41%, ask whether they considered the residual income exception. If it was reserves, the number came from them. If it was an MPR failure, that one is the programme's and the answer is a different property or a repair.

Re-apply elsewhere, targeting the overlay that stopped you. Ask the next lender directly about the specific rule that failed, before you submit anything.

Where the reason is genuinely yours — recent derogatory credit, insufficient residual income for your household size, unverifiable income — the fix is the file rather than the lender. Reducing monthly debt raises residual income twice over: it lowers the outgoing and improves the margin against the guideline, which is the exception that gets files through at higher debt-to-income.

Disclaimer

This guide describes the VA home loan process using Department of Veterans Affairs published guidance, 38 U.S.C. §§3703 and 3704, 38 CFR §§36.4340 and 36.4351, and the VA Lender's Handbook. Figures were checked on 12 October 2026. It is information, not mortgage or legal advice. No timescale given here is official, because the VA publishes no COE processing time and no federal agency publishes an average time-to-close. Lender overlays are commercial policy, vary between lenders and change without notice, so confirm each lender's own requirements directly.

The short version

Get the Certificate of Eligibility moving first, by whichever of the three official routes suits you, and ignore every turnaround figure you read, because the VA publishes none. Then shop lenders harder than you would on any other mortgage — not for rate, but for overlays, because with no VA credit score minimum the floor is set entirely by the lender in front of you.

Through the middle of the process, keep asking which rule is operating. Residual income, the 41% debt-to-income standard with its 20% residual income exception, Minimum Property Requirements and the two occupancy certifications are the programme's, and are the same everywhere. Score floors, debt-to-income ceilings and reserve requirements are the lender's. The funding fee is the programme's — 2.15% first use with no deposit, 3.3% subsequent — and it is the only fee you can finance.

If you are declined, the odds are that it was an overlay rather than a rule. Get the reason in writing, work out which category it belongs to, and if it is the lender's, take the file to someone whose policy is looser. People give up on VA loans believing the Department of Veterans Affairs turned them down. Usually it never saw the file.